Teaching blends and digraphs doesn’t have to be a hot mess, y’all. Kids don’t need more drill-and-kill— they need FUN, fast-paced, hands-on learning that actually sticks. In our classroom, we make blends and digraphs come alive with engaging activities, simple routines, and blends and digraph worksheets that actually work. This post is your peek inside how we teach these phonics skills: explicit, joyful, organized, and totally kid-approved. If you’re ready for confident readers, smoother small groups, and way fewer “What’s that sound again?” moments… you’re in the right place.
Blends And Digraphs Activities
As with all of our TKS BOOTCAMP phonics curriculum, the foundation of our blends and digraphs instruction is the circle chart. We introduce the sound and how to spell the sound. Then the students generate the words. After they suggest a word, we say the sounds and decide if it belongs on the chart. Next, I draw the picture. We say the word, identify the blend or digraph, and where the pattern is in the word. The students spell the word, and the teacher writes the letters. Then we blend the sounds to read the word 3-4 times.
After we complete the circle chart, students apply the skill by writing words that include the pattern we learned that day.
Phonics Activities: Sorting And Word Match
Another way for students to get independent practice (or extra support in small groups) are with sorting activities. For these activities, we focus on those pain points for kids such as th/f, sh/ch/th, etc. These activities are great for getting students to hear the sounds and differentiate the sounds.
Blends And Digraphs: Decodable Text
In small groups, we read decodable text to practice the phonics skills in text!
Classroom Lesson
For more information on our entire TKS BOOTCAMP CURRICULUM, Visit the TKS BOOTCAMP website!
More resources for teaching blends and digraphs!
